


so brave in victory

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Nancy Drew Files, Smut, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:22:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She always expects it later. It's too much, this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so brave in victory

She's always found it odd, that lazy drift after the adrenaline has worn off and her limbs are heavy and loose. Usually by now some combination of her and Ned and Bess and George are in a bar somewhere, a pitcher on its way to the table, margaritas or whatever's on tap, and she's pounding her fist on the table and Bess is bubbling over as she starts with_"And could you believe when—"_

It should all be over but it isn't, despite how her body has betrayed her. The rain makes its way to her, drop by drop, sliding down mottled leaves and wilted flowers. It sounds through the trees like a hush.

Out there, somewhere, on the rain-drenched ground, Simon Kappa has a gun. A rifle, big red cartridges thick as batteries and full of buckshot, salt, something awful, and her skin is clammy and crawling from the anticipation.

She hears the edge of a sound and turns and can hear her own hair falling over her shoulder, and the tension makes her freeze again. The small strands of her hair, the short wisps she can never tame, are curled and damp at her temples. The humidity has found its way into the creases and wrinkles, her lifelines, behind her earlobes, the inside of her elbows. Her quickened pulse and the heat have made her perfume bloom again, warm and floral, from between her breasts. She scrubs her palms on her jeans and winces at the rasp of it. It's too loud.

Ned moves between the trees like stop-motion, in the dusk and gloom, and a flash of lightning turns his face eerily pale. At any moment she can imagine him falling, and her heart somehow rises warm and pulsing in her throat until Ned makes his way by inches to her side.

"The sun'll be down in half an hour." His voice is so low that it's down to suggestion and telepathy almost. "That's our best bet."

"And then what?"

He slowly maneuvers until he's sitting on the ground next to her and her hip is barely against his. His lips almost against her earlobe. His breath is warm. Ned's hood is up, his too-white hands in his pockets, Nancy's bright hair wrapped in a dark scarf to keep them concealed.

But she can feel the sight on her, the bullet like the ball of a thumb shoved between her shoulder blades.

"And then we get him."

Nancy puts her hand into her pocket, by degrees, and runs her thumb along the edge of the jewel case. She'd burned all the proof to a CD. Too bad Kappa had found her Mustang and slashed all the tires, adding insult to injury by pocketing the distributor cap.

This'll be the seventh set of tires she's bought for the damn car this year. She knows the entire staff of the tire store by name.

"How?" It's hard to put any vehemence in her voice when it's so soft, and she closes her eyes, feeling suddenly five years old, like if she just can't see Kappa, he can't see her, and they can go like this, in this stalemate, until the dawn. She squeezes her eyes shut even tighter, so tight the roots of her lashes hurt and her vision goes purple and dark.

"Nan."

In this patch of wet woods like moving underwater, his hand at the small of her back is so sudden that she bolts upright, the stiff artificial fabric of her raincoat crinkling, and she can feel the warmth of his touch through her shirt. She wants to burrow into him. She would be safe there.

There's warmth radiating from his face, so close to hers, her head resting on his shoulder as they do their best not to move. She'll start shivering soon.

Sometimes she almost thinks by sheer determination she can make herself fly. Up over the trees, some unfettered Icarus, away from all this, light as a dream. Her hand wrapped warm around his.

And then they hear a creak twenty feet away in the darkening woods and if she could ever fly, she's so lightheaded from the adrenaline and strain that for a second she's left her body and she wants to—

She wants to beg, wants to scream, to sob, to rage. To tell Ned everything she's babbled in her weakest moments before, it's so weak, to think it will all end this way. Kappa doesn't deserve to be the one who takes her down.

—and she crashes back down, her breath harsh and rapid in her own ears. Kappa.

As one, with no word whispered between them, they rise, her bare hand wrapped around wet bark to keep her balance, shifting her weight by heartbeats. Ned's mouth is open, he's tensed and his fists are tight, and in the white flash of another bolt of lightning she sees him and her heart jumps painfully in her chest in some strange, cracked memory of the day she ever met him. Every inch of her skin is sensitized. A raindrop against her scalp is as shocking as a gunshot.

Another lightning flash.

Ned makes a sound deep in his throat and his fingers are against her jaw and he angles her head and she can feel it before she sees it, the silhouette of Kappa, the rifle angling from his shoulder. It's not fair. Unlike many of the other creeps and criminals Nancy has ever pursued, Kappa has no unintentionally helpful tendency to break into gloating soliloquies on his own prowess and her inevitable failure. If anyone finds out how much money he stole, he's going to prison. She and Ned are all that stand between him and that future. It's as simple as that. Their lives are worth that money he stole, bit by bit, for eight of the ten years he's been working for his father-in-law.

The words are in her head, her muscles know it before he says it.

_"We have to run."_

Even the steadily increasing rhythm of the thunder and the insistent percussion of the rain won't be enough to cover the sound of them crashing through the underbrush, and after dark they're twice as likely to slam into trees and low-hanging branches. But she can't imagine the meek, nebbish Kappa stalking them with night-vision goggles.

There are too many things she'd never imagined.

But she can't stop staring at the spot where she saw him, convinced that only her gaze can pin him to that spot, only her gaze and her sheer willpower can keep him from seeing the two of them.

Ned's thumb against the base of her spine.

Unbidden it rises, fingertips burning a trail as he shoves his hand up under her shirt and pulls it over her head. Cheap tequila and sweet and sour mix.

She blinks and Ned's hand cups the side of her slender waist and she's back in the wet thunderstricken woods with a crazy embezzler chasing them. Instead of in her apartment the last time they made love.

For one brilliant second the space between the trees is white and motionless, and she can see every drop of rain frozen in midair and the blue shadow of the branches and the sharp tang of ozone in the air is enough to take her breath away.

And Kappa isn't where she saw him anymore.

As the rumble begins Ned's fingertips tighten in her side and they turn, sneakers squealing on the tree roots. And she sees it, the way the rain on the long barrel turns it to one long strip of light, his glasses twin opaque panes in the moonlight.

Kappa.

Raising the rifle to brace against his shoulder, his teeth gritted.

She draws in a single breath, the rain dripping into her eyes, lungs aching. Ned's hand warm on her side, maybe the last thing she'll ever feel.

And then he squeezes her hard and lashes out at the same time Nancy sweeps one foot up, her grip so tight on the wet bark of the tree that she feels it start to give under her grip. Her first kick hits him in the shin, her second in the crotch, as Ned jerks the rifle out of Kappa's hand, pointing the muzzle up over his own shoulder as he strikes Kappa square in the breastbone with it.

This time, when the comedown hits, she's finally safe.

\--

There is no sweeter aphrodisiac than fear.

She would argue that there are better ones: roses, chocolate, champagne. An expensive dinner and the feel of silk against her bare thigh and his fingers beating an absent tattoo on the nape of her neck.

"God, that was close."

Nancy blinks and barely knows where she is, her eyelids fluttering down as Ned latches insistently onto her neck. She kicks off her shoes, her socks are still unpleasantly damp, and buries her fingers in Ned's hair, tilting his face up and her own down for a long, deep kiss. He boosts her (_ahh, that's the back of his couch_) and reaches for her jeans, and when he brushes her side she winces and lets a sharp gasp escape into his mouth, reaching for his own jeans.

"Oh." He pulls back and cups a hand over her side, and she winces again. "Oh, I'm sorry."

They are in the small hours together. The street is deserted to the point of loneliness; the cold front, wave after wave of brief intense storms, has driven everyone inside. The air is so damp that it hangs morosely in the folds of her clothes, waiting to be caught when she runs her fingers through her hair.

Kappa is in custody. The CD is still in Nancy's pocket but the police have his computer now and it's superfluous, especially with double attempted murder on his record.

Nancy unzips her jacket and lets it slide to the couch, momentum dragging it to the floor, and she hears the muted click of the jewel case thumping to the carpet. Ned slides her shirt up and she crosses her hands over her chest, drawing it over her head as Ned lifts her and brushes his lips against the finger-shaped bruises on her side.

"So the worst injury you get on this case is from me."

Her skin flushes everywhere his mouth touches. She lets herself fall forward, half over his back, as he carries her to his bedroom, her jeans sliding dangerously low on her hips. His curtains aren't drawn; another strobe of pure blue-white light fills the room, and she sees the muscles rippling under Ned's shirt and the hardwood floor, so deliciously cool under her bare feet when she's the one who gets up to make coffee in the mornings. He tosses her lightly onto the bed, the covers still in disarray and bunched under the small of her back, and his smile is soft.

"Guess I should count myself lucky."

He shakes his head. "It was close," he says, almost like it's her fault, and he crosses his arms over his chest and tugs his shirt over his head. By then she's propped up on her elbows, creamy breasts trembling faintly under her bra, her gaze sharp, suspicious.

"It could've been worse," she says, instead of the thousand other fights she could start.

"Not much."

With one jerk of his hips his jeans are falling down, and her gaze unwillingly drops to his boxers. She had been so scared, before, that she could feel the imprint of the bullet on every square inch of her skin; now it's so sensitized, waiting for his mouth, his fingertips, and her blood is up.

"Either stop talking or stop," she nods at his nearly naked frame, and he slides onto the bed, his knees nudging her legs apart, that ache between her thighs clenching in anticipation as he lowers his mouth to her side, to the bruises he left on her.

"Oh, there's no way this is stopping," he mumbles into her skin.

She arches. She probably tastes like sweat and rainwater and he doesn't say a word, his tongue flicking lightly over her skin. She folds her legs and brings her feet up, stripping off her socks, then takes her bra off, tossing it into the same outer darkness. Ned kisses his way back up and murmurs in appreciation at finding her breasts bare, suckling each with such specific and intense attention that she wraps her legs tight around him, grinding against the bulge of his erection.

"Are you wet?"

He murmurs it lazily against her cheek after one teasingly long kiss, and she squirms against him, drawing her nails down his spine. "Check and see," she teases him back, and he wastes no time in pulling her panties down, pulling off his own boxers. He's on top of her again almost immediately, her inner thighs spread wide to take his weight, to open herself for him, and the length of his cock settles against the length of her slit.

"Ned," she groans, arching, cupping his ass.

"For a second there, I thought."

His voice is shaking but his eyes are clear, not blurred with tears, and when she opens her mouth to reassure him, he takes his cock in his hand and rubs the head against the tip of her clit, and she tips her head back and shivers, fully, naked and almost screaming with her arousal. He leads it down between the folds of her secret flesh, jerking in an instinctual thrust as he finds her, wet and hot and waiting. He fits himself just inside her and splays one hand against her other hip, his thumb hooked between her lips to dig against her clit, teasing her with glancing brushes against it as he slowly fills her, and with every inch she's more and more defenseless, whimpering when she tries to grind against him and he holds her hips still under his hand.

"Oh, please," she begs, hands wandering over his bare chest, cupping his ass to pull him more firmly against her. Her inner flesh stretches, aching at the length of his cock, and she pants, jerking under him when he's flush inside her, the ball of his thumb massaging her clit. He pulls out and thrusts again, his cock incredibly slick from her arousal, and this time he lets her dig her heels into the small of his back, angling to thrust back against him just as hard, taking him so deep that she cries out in a shiver of pure arousal so strong it's almost painful.

"Nan."

"Oh God," she moans in reply, "oh God, yes," her hips jerking and pumping under his, every nerve in her body dead save the ones under the flesh he touches. She sucks hard at his shoulder, hard enough to give him a hickey almost immediately, and digs her heels into the strata of covers, seeking a counterpoint to let her thrust against him even harder.

"More," he gasps, and it's not a question, but she nods anyway, and the wave, the wave keeps building, and she wants him to stop, but if he stops she won't go any higher—

"Oh God more," she sobs, and he flicks her clit with his nail and plunges so deep she can almost feel the delicate skin of his balls and she gropes for anything, anything, drawing her knees up and her voice rises in higher and higher cries, he's almost shaking and his thrusts are jerkier, and then he collapses to her, still flicking her clit as her slick wet flesh ripples and spasms against him. She tilts her head so far back that the crown is against the bed and squirms under him, fighting, begging him not to stop, begging him to stop oh fuck please stop please don't stop, and then he stills with his thumb motionless but still pressed to her swollen clit, spent and slowing inside her, his mouth at the base of her throat.

"Yes," she whispers, her mouth bone-dry, and swallows.

"Yes."

He raises his head and she tilts hers down, and they gaze at each other as the last weak fork of lightning streaks across the sky, his gaze warm and his smile slow, one corner of his mouth quirking up as he strokes her clit one last time, drawing a sharp orgasmic whimper from her. They have watched, with the lights on. For tonight it is enough to feel.

To be alive, knowing how close they were, knowing she'll never admit it.

He kisses her, slow and open-mouthed, one last time as he pulls out, letting his wet cock slide against her clit, her hands clenching his sides hard, digging bruises into the skin.

"Now we're even."

"Not on your life," she purrs, sucking his lower lip into her mouth.

There are better ways. But this one has worked pretty well so far.


End file.
